Nanotoxicology profiling of cancer nanomedicines

Abstract This chapter is provided a detailed overview of the nanotoxicology profiling of cancer nanomedicine. Nanomedicine is a novel and promising alternative technology which provides various advantages upon conventional cancer therapies. Nanomedicine applies nanotechnology to highly specific medical interventions for the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of diseases. Nanotoxicology is a subfield of toxicology that is concerned with potentially toxic effects of nanoscale structures or particles with a diameter of less than 100 nanometers. In spite of nanomedicines capability of delivering chemotherapeutic agents with lower systemic toxicity. The conventional assays to assess toxicology induced by nanomaterials are physical and chemical characterization, in vitro and in vivo characterization. The physicochemical characteristics required for evaluation are the size, surface charge, morphology, chemical composition, solubility, and agglomeration. In vitro characterization of nanomaterials are standardized using various types of mammalian cell cultures whereas in vivo characterization is the study of the interaction between nanomaterials with biological organisms.